ศาลาชุมนุม

[Richard Wordingham]

Just the spelling of Lao So So, ໂສ້ , is a disproof of all my thoughts I had about this issue. I would have expected that it is written with So Sang ek but not So Suea tho ...

There are a lot of words in Thai that are written with a low consonant and mai ek, but for which the etymological spelling is a high consonant with mai tho. My favourite examples are ฆ่า 'kill' and เฒ่า 'old'. Nice to collect another letter. The northern Thai pronunciation corresponds to โส้ rather than โซ่, but this may be a loanword rather than an inherited word.

The spelling of Lao 'lup' is a political issue. The traditional spelling will be with lo lot, i.e. U+0EA3 LAO LETTER LO LING.

[r2d2]

My favourite examples are ฆ่า 'kill' and เฒ่า 'old'.

ເຖົ້າ-->เฒ่า , ຂ້າ --> ฆ่า Nice to see this! I was not aware of this phenomenon and your examples are really lovely (and demonstrative for me).
Matching Sanskrit devanagari with the ... Lao script, possible but not that trivial... I'll come back soon to the actual heading of this thread, but, for a second Lao letters...:

Before the Lao spelling reform, there was an attempt to add or revive the missing letters needed to write Pali (and Sanskrit?) in the Lao script rather than the Tham script. Apart from this, I get the impression the Lao spelling reform had little effect on the complement of the Lao script as used for Lao.

I fear that my past view on the spelling reform was simply wrong. The reason why I would like to show you as follows:

ภรรยา [พันยา, พันระยา] {ພັນຣະຍາ, (ພັນລະຍາ)} (ส. ภารฺยา; ป. ภริยา)

Actually in this way I came in contact with Lao dictionaries: I tried to find out more about how to use sattha akson (Thai/Siamese) without knowing its rules in those days. Modern Lao spelling was a big help for the further understanding. Based on this experience, I obviously (?) concluded wrong that part of the Lao spelling reform was to eliminate the letters needed to write Pali (and Sanskrit?), thus, applying "sattha akson Lao" on the (posited) older (and more tua/to than 27 [?] comprising) phayansana, and declaring the transcription result as "Lao according to the modern spelling rules".

I understand your remark, now, in that way, that there was no older phayansana and that it just had 27 tua/to for more than 40 years (?) only.

Thus, I thought เฒ่า-->ເຖົ້າ but not ເຖົ້າ-->เฒ่า. But since เฒ่า has obviously no Sanskrit etymology

Thus, Lao letters (to write Lao language) were never (at least for significantly more than 40 years ago) used to transliterate (but only to transcribe) PaliSanskrit terms.

Then, besides I have to renew my view on the Lao spelling reform, I have to reconsider my view on Thai letters themselves:

A letter like ภ, pho samphao, was it "always" in the Thai/Siamese phayanchana? And if not, were these letters introduced for means of transliterating Pali/Sanskrit?

Must add that ซ โซ่ is not needed to write Sanskrit, or Pali. But I understand now that not ໂສ້ (and not Northern Thai โส้), but, rather, โซ่ is more likely to be the result of a 'spelling reform' - or should it be called spelling accident?

[r2d2]

The traditional spelling will be with lo lot, i.e. U+0EA3 LAO LETTER LO LING.

Thank you very much for being so clear as the issue is so confusing for me.
Above you see LAO LETTER LO LING U+0EA3 represented graphically as a car (lot/rot),
and LAO LETTER LO LOOT U+0EA5 represented graphically by a monkey (ling/ling).

And Lao letter lo ling looks like Thai letter ro ruea, and Lao letter lo loot looks like Thai letter lo ling...

What is the background of these, at least me, confusing facts? I hope my sources for unicode are ok, but does this allow a conclusion on the age of the phayansana shown above?

[Richard Wordingham]

What is the background of these, at least me, confusing facts? I hope my sources for unicode are ok, but does this allow a conclusion on the age of the phayansana shown above?

When it was pointed out to the Unicode consortium, no-one confessed to making the mistakes. 'FO TAM' and 'FO SUNG' also had their names swapped.

One may conclude that the consonants concerned were in existence by the end of the 20th century - not very revealing! If you look at the definitive page, http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0E80.pdf , you'll see that alternative names, FO FON, FO FAY, RO and LO are now offered.

[Richard Wordingham]

I understand your remark, now, in that way, that there was no older phayansana and that it just had 27 tua/to for more than 40 years (?) only.

I'm struggling to find out. I have sources that say that the Thai Noi script had at least some of the extra letters, but they may mean the Fak Kham script. It's possible that Lao ditched the extra letters in the 16th century. After all, if you wanted to write Pali or Sanskrit, there was always the Tham script. One could try looking through the Lao Buhan script manuscripts at http://www.laomanuscripts.net , but I find them hard to read. Be warned that some alleged Lao Buhan texts are actually in the Lao version of the Tham script.

A letter like ภ, pho samphao, was it "always" in the Thai/Siamese phayanchana?

Yes. Remember that the alphabet was introduced to SE Asia to write Sanskrit.

Must add that ซ โซ่ is not needed to write Sanskrit, or Pali. But I understand now that not ໂສ້ (and not Northern Thai โส้), but, rather, โซ่ is more likely to be the result of a 'spelling reform' - or should it be called spelling accident?

The spelling is a spelling accident. Similar words are spelt correctly. The letter ซ was added as part of the adaptation of the alphabet to Thai - it's part of the Sukhothai system.

[r2d2]

When it was pointed out to the Unicode consortium, no-one confessed to making the mistakes.

Errare humanum est

Thank you very much for all this information. Very clear and evident. But I have to change, now, my view on Lao language and Lao spelling reform considerably!

[thaitom]

Interesting post!

Looking over how the Burmese script matches up with the Thai, I would argue with the author of the diagram on a few points, particularly when they match up: จ with စ, ฉ with ဆ, and ช with ဇ. There are a few others as well, but those struck me immediately.
Having learnt Thai before trying to tackle Burmese, I made a similar chart just to try and get it all straight in my head. I always ended up with a few consonants left over that did not have modern-day correlations.

For example, with the letters I cited above:
စ is your typical /s/ sound (which I would more readily match up with ซ in its modern-day usage)
ဆ is /sʰ/ an aspirated s (not in modern-day spoken Thai)
ဇ is /z/ like in zig-zag (also not in Thai)

My guess is that the chart represents something more historical about the letters, but I can’t say what that is…

I can say unequivocally though that what these characters represent for modern-day Thai and Burmese don’t match up.

Maybe it would be a fun project of our own here on the site to build up a more accurate version of such a chart? Just an idea.

Cheers!
T

[pensive]

Maybe, but you are the only one here right now. If you're not going to do it, nobody else is.

[Richard Wordingham]

My guess is that the chart represents something more historical about the letters, but I can’t say what that is…

Historical identity. These scripts are basically the same, but with some different extra letters and with extra diacritics - a lot in the case of Thai. Unlike the Roman alphabet, there has generally been no urge to transnationally standardise the letter shapes or restore a 'classic' form - rather, individual differences have been treasured. (Shan seems to be a noticeable exception, with a tendency to switch to the Mon script styles, but then this happened in the context of a Burmese empire.)

[r2d2]

When it was pointed out to the Unicode consortium, no-one confessed to making the mistakes. 'FO TAM' and 'FO SUNG' also had their names swapped.

One may conclude that the consonants concerned were in existence by the end of the 20th century - not very revealing! If you look at the definitive page, http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0E80.pdf , you'll see that alternative names, FO FON, FO FAY, RO and LO are now offered.

As a kind of "up-date":

That's from a Laotian Ko Kai Kho Khai (according to my [poor] understanding [of Laotian language] first edition as of 2000, last revision as of 2010):

LAO LETTER LO LING (0EA3) seems to be currently tought (officially?) as lo lakhang. Btw., at SEAlang Library Lao I found the term only as ລະຄັງ and ລັງຄັງ each, thus with LAO LETTER LO LOOT (0EA5) only ... Evtl. ຣະຄັງ a neologism of Laotian language of the 21st century?